I shake my head, laughing. “Look at you. You’re with Morgan and suddenly you’re the pleasure expert?”
April beams. “Not an expert. Astudent. Being a student of pleasure is almost impossible to fail—if you’re having fun and exploring with someone you trust. There’s no one right way to do it. That’s the best part.”
Maya leans in. “We’re about to hit a knot-tying workshop in the quiet room. Want to come? You don’t have to do anything, just watch.”
“No thanks.” I lift my tea again. “I think I’ll stay here and be astudent of pleasure.”
They smirk and head off.
It’s not that I don’t want to be with them—I just need a moment. I’m hanging on the edge of something I don’t fully understand. And honestly? I like being a little anonymous right now.
I glance back toward the scene. The same man is still standing beside me.
Still watching.
Still saying nothing.
I nudge him gently with my elbow. “What exactly is happening here?” I whisper, angling my voice low. “Is this like… a technique? Or is he just freestyling?”
“What’s happening,” the man says, that deep voice tinged with humor, “is that they’re having averygood time.”
I swear I can hear the grin beneath his mask.
The man in the Punisher tee drops the flogger and switches to using his palms—spanking her the old-fashioned way. His blows are rhythmic, precise. He shifts angles, aiming for different parts of her now-glowing skin.
She cries out with every hit—but not in distress. There’spleasurewoven through her voice.
The other two women lean in, whispering to her, their hands soft and calming against her shoulders.
It’s strangely intimate.
I realize I want to see her face.
Whoisshe? Who’s this woman brave enough to kneel bare in a room full of strangers and take a spanking like that without flinching?
She doesn’t squirm. She doesn’t resist.
She justreceives.
Something tightens in my core.
And without meaning to, my mind flickers again.
To Hunter.
To those eyes watching me at the restaurant.
To those forearms.
To that mouth.
I don’t know why I’m thinking of him right now.
But I am.
“So… the question,” I say, glancing over at the masked man beside me. The anonymity makes me brave. “You never answered. Have you ever done that?”
He doesn’t flinch. “Honestly? No. Never used a toy.”
